Fallout Shelter is now available on Android

Fallout Shelter
YouTube YouTube
Watch On

Today is August 13, and if you've been paying attention you'll know that means that Fallout Shelter, Bethesda's free-to-play Vault-Tec management game, is now available for Android. It's also been updated rather substantially, with new additions including dangerous Raiders and the handy Mr. Handy as a premium reward.

Mobile games aren't really our thing around here, but Fallout most definitely is, and since we mentioned a few weeks ago that the Android version of Fallout Shelter was coming, I figured that a little bit of noise about the actual release would be appropriate. As promised, the update also brings Deathclaws and Mole Rats to the game, exposes your vault dwellers to the dangers of Raiders, tweaks the vault population growth rate, and makes various other changes and fixes.

Mr. Handy may be the most useful addition of them all—the Bethesda Blog describes it as a "friendly, entertaining alternative to tapping and collecting resources." Each Mr. Handy is a "premium reward," with an in-app purchase price of $1, according to Touch Arcade, or $4 for five.

You'll need more than that to beat the high score, though: As Polygon points out, someone named Jake Poile has already hacked the game to give himself a score of two billion points. Second place? Bytesize TestUser, with a little under 16,000.

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Latest in Fallout
Ghoul in sunglasses
Some Fallout 76 players have encountered a 'major game-breaking bug' which either makes it impossible to complete the ghoul quest or just makes you temporarily invisible
A ghoul player character standing next to another ghoul
'You are hereby conscripted': Fallout 76 players demand newly-transformed ghoul players help them mine radioactive ore
Male and Female Vault Dweller holding guns and cresting a hill with ruined city in background
The New Vegas remake of the Fallout 3 that never was just got its first demo, not to be confused with the straight-up remake of the cancelled Fallout 3 or, indeed, Fallout 3
Lucy smiling while using her pip boy
Ella Purnell dreads being typecast for her 'poop finger' in Fallout: 'This finger is the bane of my life'
Fallout 76 - a player in a vault suit gives a thumbs up
Fallout 76's former project lead says it's still his favourite game he worked on, but the initial reception was demoralising: 'I got yelled at in an Apple Store, I'll never forget'
Mortimer Goth swanning around inside a New Vegas casino built inside the Sims 2
A Fallout: New Vegas fan is so fed up waiting for a remake he's decided to do it himself. The twist? He's making it in the Sims 2
Latest in News
The jester from Balatro, portrayed in unsettling detail in real life, wears an uncanny smile and stares at the viewer.
Balatro's LocalThunk isn't 'trying to pull a Banksy', he just 'wanted to be left alone to make his game'
Two characters from Warframe 1999 lounging in a bar.
The warframe with a guitar that shoots fire is out today alongside a bunch of metalcore-inspired skins, cementing Warframe's spiral into Y2K madness
A Minecraft movie promo image of the main cast standing side by side,
This is why the Minecraft movie is called A Minecraft Movie
helldivers 2 democratic detonation
Johan Pilestedt warns that Helldivers 2 took 4 more years than planned because Arrowhead skipped pre-production and dove right in: 'Always do your homework before you start spending millions and millions and millions of dollars in making a game'
helldivers 2 arrowhead CCO johan pilestedt
Helldivers 2's Johan Pilestedt says developers need to start taking more risks: 'Safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make them'
Split Fiction trailer still - Zoe and Mio staring into a large pipe
A pair of Split Fiction players will be heading to Sweden for an early look at Hazelight's next game after completing a secret challenge so tough, some developers can 'barely' beat it